Ruined

In the mood for something spicy as the dead of winter surrounds us? Jackie Ashenden gives us a heated but somewhat difficult story in Ruined, her first release for Harlequin’s new Dare line, about a will-they-or-won’t-they relationship between two childhood friends who fake a relationship to protect her daughter.

Cat Livingston is in deep, deep trouble. So much trouble that she’s willing to confront the Knights of Ruin, a local motorcycle club with an infamous reputation, in the middle of a wild party. She hopes to find her best friend Dane ‘Smoke’ Kingsolver among the revelers – he’s the club’s enforcer, and she knows he’ll help her get her young daughter Annie away from her abusive ex – Justin – after he misses his custody drop-off date.

Smoke is a little miffed when Cat interrupts him mid-public-blowjob to ask for help, but once he hears that it’s about Annie he’s willing to suit up for her. His nearly lifelong friendship with Cat and fatherlike relationship with Annie mean more to him than anything else, and he’s more than ready to beat Justin down until he gives Annie back. But Justin’s a lawyer and the police chief’s son, and touching him means breaking a sweet deal the Knights have with law enforcement; so after Justin relinquishes Annie, Smoke and Cat realize they’ll have to get a little creative with their battle plan to keep the man from gaining full custody.

Smoke suggests that Cat pose as his ‘old lady’, making her a member of the Knights and entitling her to their protection by default. Even though Cat is reluctant to become a part of the lifestyle – deploring what it’s done to Smoke’s character, hating the sort of dependent marriage her parents had had – she sees no better option. The relationship seems perfectly tenable at first, but the trouble is Cat and Smoke have been suppressing major crushes on one another for years, and they begin to heat up the closer they get to each other. The two of them have never gone there before, but when quarters get closer and their attraction boils over, are they ready to face what tomorrow might bring them – together?

Ruined has a lot of classic Ashenden tropes; deprived children with abuse-tainted lives coming together as close friends and then bonding as adults; horny, bossy controlling alpha men and women who don’t take their crap; exhibitionistic sex by the metric ton and some anal play. If you don’t like romances in which the hero has sex with other women, has a morally imperfect career (and is, in fact, a murderer), or occasionally treats the heroine like a pretty chunk of meat, then this book won’t be for you. Yet even though it wasn’t precisely my cup of tea, I found it to at least be passably entertaining.

Smoke can be pushy and displays some controlling behavior, and his appraisal of Cat’s body the second she shows some sexual attraction to him is, frankly, gross, but his behavior wavers back and forth from alpha-hole territory, leaving him a mixed bag for me for most of the book. He loves Annie and Cat and wants to see them safe, which is commendable. Yet in the end his ‘Annie and Cat are mine, Cat is my property now and I get to call the shots’ speechifying doesn’t feel much different from Justin’s desire to control Cat through Annie, and Cat’s blithe assumption that ‘what’s healthy for me is going to be healthy for Annie’ is completely ridiculous given what she’s already been through with Justin.

Cat is much easier to like; a single mom working on the edge of poverty who knows Smoke better than anyone, she’s not going to take any crap foisted on her by the club, nor is she willing to let her daughter suffer because the mistakes she’s made. She loves Annie more than anyone, and considering their past, her lust/love for Smoke is understandable.

But to be honest, though, I had a hard time buying Cat and Smoke as friends before they became lovers. Bonded together by their crappy childhoods, sharing an intense sexual chemistry, they otherwise don’t share much when it comes to interests or rapport beyond it and the shortness of the novel left the author next to no time to convince me these two were compatible beyond occasional bedroom boinkfests. Cat abhors Smoke’s lifestyle and he wants to control hers; thus they feel more like victims of their own glands heading for a bad break-up. At one point he compares his post-orgasmic sensation of peace with Cat to the peace he felt after killing his abusive dad. Even though he acknowledges it’s creepy – yikes!

In case you haven’t guessed, there are touches of moral equivocating going on here. Smoke makes enough money doing SOMETHING with the Knights that makes it okay for him to take an entire day off to play hide the pickle with Cat, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is. The author is content enough to say that the gang takes care of its own, have formed a barely-tolerant family and therefore are a nicer, better club than the one that drove Cat’s father to his death – but these are people who’ve paid off the police in their small town; something must be rotten in Denmark that Ashenden doesn’t want to address. If you’re going to write about a biker gang, you’re going to have to do more than have them engage in public sex and smoke a little weed to convince me they’re living outside the law (but then again, admitting that they get their money from running guns or drug trafficking like other biker gangs kind of ruins the ‘Smoke’s totes a good guy’ narrative). Also the daughter is the worst example of a plot prop I’ve ever seen, not even flinching when she’s permanently separated from a father who – abusive creep to Cat or not – she had a decent relationship with right up to the moment Smoke catches him kidnapping her. She exists to squeal over Smoke, act as a plot device, and not flinch when her mother kisses her sleeping face minutes after blowing the hero.

Ultimately, Ashenden’s engaging, strong heroine and her decently-drawn characters are appealing enough to keep the pages turning, even though her protagonists are so flawed you might end up feeling a little dirty rooting for their union. I know, I know; the Dare line is a erotic romance imprint, and the strong sexual element of the story is supposed to be the main focus of the tale. In this, Ruined satisfies the parameters of the line. Unfortunately, the plot kept intruding to distract me from the erotic element, and some of Ashenden’s narrative choices toss a bucket of cold water on the heat of her characters’ ardour.

If you enjoyed Sons of Anarchy and wished it’d had a happier ending, then you might like Ruined more than I did.

18 Comments

I’m a big Ashenden fan, but this one didn’t appeal to me. It seemed to hit most of the major elements of Ashenden’s “template” but I really didn’t think her heart was in it. I could be wrong, but this is the first book of hers I remember that employs first-person narration and perhaps that’s what rattled me. Also, I understand Harlequin is trying to really up the ante with edgy stuff in the Dare imprint, but the couple I’ve seen so far seem to focus more on putting women in the path of violence and giving them very few good choices rather then giving the heroine steamy sexy fun times. Oh well, even the best writers can’t hit it out of the park every time they’re up to bat.

I wonder if she felt stymied by the tiny length of the length requirement? Either way it’s a shame; I liked Smoke until around when he and Cat got together, then I felt like she’d written herself into a corner by the end. You’re completely right, and i bet her next book will be a return to form!!

I read this. I’d agree that the hero is pretty unsavory. It made me wonder what the goal is with the Dare books. If it’s edgy, super hot books, then this book succeeded. If it’s romances that most women will feel good about, this book fails that test.

This story initially started out as a newsletter serial that got part way before Jackie signed on with the Dare line. So I’d already read the first couple of chapters and gotten invested in the characters, then had to wait a year to finish the story! She definitely straddles the line with her heroes. It pretty much was what I expected as an MC romance though she did makes the club not too unsavory. I gave it a B in my review.

These “unsavory” heroes seem to be popular in the MC world books that have been coming out. Authors like Jill Sorenson and Joanna Wylie have heroes that are openly stated and shown being assassins( “doing wet work”) for the club and pretty much every other type of illegal activity possible. Public sex and other things supposedly very realistic to the MC life are also frequently included.

I feel like Kristen Ashley really got the ball rolling with Motorcycle Man where she created this group of “good guy” biker vigilantes who patrol around their area to keep drug dealers and prostitutes away (yet have a history of drugs and prostitution in their not so distant past) and make all their big money from a lucrative custom car/bike business. In the latest novella Ashley has the hero think about how only two “brothers” now in the Chaos MC are players/not monogamous.

These other authors, and there are many more than I have mentioned, have taken the ball further to create much more “realistic” MC’s where 99% of the guys aren’t monogamous hotties and openly state how they “live free” by breaking whatever laws they want and engaging in acts pretty much no (or very few) romance heroes ever would have before. The heroines ususally get involved because they need the protection these guys offer that they can’t or won’t get through law enforcement.

I think of the ones writing now Joanna Wylde is the most talented, has done a lot of real life research, and has written some very good books. Her older “heroes” tend to be complete jerks, for lack of a better word, but some of her younger ones are pretty good- if you enjoy that type of book, and I find her stories engaging. Another interesting thing about her books is that some of the heroines are willing to kill or do things beyond the pale, which is a switch form the whole hero being the one to say “you are so lovely and pure and I am the big bad sinner who will protect your innocence.” As I said these books aren’t for everyone but if you believe “sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander” at least it’s not hypocritical in that sense.

Another thing about this genre of books is that it’s willing to go to some gritty places with its heroines as well. The norm in traditional romances is that heroine is either an educated “classy” professional at the top of her game, or at least hardworking, earnest and sweet. The heroines of many of these books come from rough, abusive backgrounds and aren’t fashionable boutique owners, they are strippers or work in strip clubs, dive bars etc. They have made bad choices, chose bad guys, often have a child and can’t break out of the cycle they were born into- so a guy making good money from dubious means who can protect them seems like a good deal.

Chrisreader, do you have titles for the Wylde books that don’t feature jerks? I love books with heroines who are allowed to get their hands dirty and heroes who don’t ever think about feminine purity, and I don’t mind illegal activity as long as it doesn’t involve slavery (sexual or otherwise). But I can’t deal with the uber-possessiveness and the over-the-top YOU MUST DO AS I SAY BECAUSE YOU ARE MIIIIIIIINE stuff; the leads can be vaguely terrible people, but they have to treat each other respectfully and well, or I’m out. This seems to rule out quite a lot of books with grittier settings, including (from the sound of it) this one, which is too bad because I’d been eyeing it. If you have any recommendations to offer, I’d really appreciate it.

Hi, the books (in chronological order) that I would recommend from Joanna Wylde (knowing there is some really rough language and situations) are:

“Devil’s Game”-This features the daughter of the head of the local Reaper’s chapter and a guy from a rival gang. The hero is up to no good, particularly at first but I feel like the heroine gives as good as she gets. The hero has more respect for her and ends up with a healthier relationship than any of the previous older heroes including her skanky father. They are both young and it would probably fall under “New Age”.

“Silver Bastard” features a member of an affiliated MC to the Reapers called “The Silver Bastards”. Be warned the way the couple originally meets is really problematic because of the heroines age and because she is being abused by her stepfather. Triggers galore for some people. I really liked that it never occurs to the hero to think less of the heroine for what she has been through. He’s rough and tough but always thinks she is great and someone worth trying to win ans she isn’t afraid to stand up for herself with him when necessary. I also loved the heroines relationship with her best friend and the character of the “old lady” of the MC’s President who really is shown as someone who is active and helps people in their community. This is also a New Age as well.

“Reaper’s Fall”- was released after Silver Bastard but is about the character in Silver Bastard’s best friend who was serving jail time with him and takes place concurrently with Silver Bastard. The heroine is great and calls the hero on his bull. He does act like a selfish jerk at one point, but she doesn’t stand for it and (spoiler) they have a period of separation but he works hard for a long time to regain her trust and make amends. Again it’s a New Age.

The other Wylde story I would recommend is a novella from the “1001 Dark Nights Series”. It’s called “Shade’s Lady” and is different because it’s not about young characters. Shade is the head of ALL the Reapers MC’s and not a twenty something. The heroine is a down on her luck woman who chose a horrible ex-husband and has an equally awful boyfriend. She lives with her sister (in a decrepit trailer) who is in a worse situation with two small kids and a drug dealing ex who won’t leave her alone. The heroine is fun and feisty despite her bad choices and is always trying to channel her inner Wonder Woman. Wylde ending up adding a “year’s later” epilogue to it based off a situation in real life that is really nice. It doesn’t feature any of the characters or plots from other books so the reading order doesn’t matter and it may be a good way to ease into Wylde and see if she works for you as an author.

Jill Sorensen’s book “Riding Dirty” has the main couple engage in a threesome with another woman but it wouldn’t qualify for a ménage romance per se. Megan Crane wrote one MC book in a series where the four or five books were all written by different authors. I think it was “Make You Burn”. The main guy is clearly based off Jax from Sons of Anarchy, I think his name is literally “Ajax”. He’s a real alpha jerk in a lot of it but her story and writing was so much better than a couple other books that followed in the series- I think it was definitely the standout. It really showed the chauvinism inherent in the MC world and the main couple was certainly electric.